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A intense debate lately spread widely on social media, following someone asked a query to women: which would you prefer be lost in the woods alongside a male or with a bear? Similar to the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it exposed wildly different worldviews and life encounters, highlighted divides between the sexes, and could easily to induce a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering about it for too long. There was also the almost inevitable follow-up where men of a certain stripe took to the internet to inform women how foolish they were to select the animal and went on to limn the punishments they merited for that choice. This at least allowed those females who were uncertain about their decision to make it with renewed assurance.

Portraying the Setup

To Cook a Bear effectively dramatises this nifty little setup. The six-part drama is based on Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 book with the identical title (rendered in 2020 for English readers). It follows the struggles of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family as they come to start a fresh religious post within Kengis, an isolated village in Sweden’s north, in 1852. In a place lacking many joys, none of the inhabitants particularly warm to his puritanical approach to alcohol and revelry, yet it is his protection of the poor – especially the native Sami population, from which hails the preacher’s adopted son the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in societal fairness and equal rights that places him in direct opposition with the Kengis local authorities.

The Antagonists

Quickly collaborating against him include the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating mill owner the matron Sjödahl (the actress), seen early on firing a newly injured worker with minimal compensation while he is still babbling at the sight of his pulped hand, and anyone else who profit from a populace easily swayed with some containers of the whisky provided by the unsettling store owner Lindmark (the actor). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness pales once travelling artist Beronius arrives in the story (Simon J Berger, delivering a performance of exceptional unsettling intensity). If they are – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they still serve as potent archetypes.

Narrative Development

Once the foundations of conflict sown, the moment arrives to get down to narrative business. The maid employed by the doctor, Hilda (the actress), duly vanishes in the forest. Indications of her flight and animal scratches upon a trunk are found but she is nowhere to be seen. Rumours and fears of a man/maid-eating bear prowling the woodland circulate, but the pastor has another theory which he and his ward embark to prove.

A Strange Creation

This Bear Drama is a somewhat odd beast. It creates a fine sense of the bleakness that allows suspicion and bias and grim legends flourish from the native legend that bears can be controlled or possessed by the spirits of men. And it doesn’t romanticise the tough existence experienced by the residents, where brutality, whether that of the wild or people, lurks constantly on the edges, waiting to erupt. But the characters rarely become beyond symbols – or maybe, while the conflicts between justice and vengeance, rationality and faith, good and evil intensify, representative characters in a fable – which stops the entire production truly coming to life.

Tonal Inconsistencies

And then, exist numerous tonally jarring moments in which the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and discern the maid’s destiny becomes nearly laughable. He positions himself observing shattered containers and clumps of hair in hay barns like a combined Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom were required to taste a blend of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to confirm that, yes, it was clearly coagulated blood on the site), before announcing his newest conclusion and extracting a corpse out of a swamp.

Clashing Agendas

The local leaders are determined proving that Hilda was killed by an animal, maybe to preserve the calm, perhaps to protect a fellow elite. The clergyman is intent on establishing otherwise, and the evidence so rapidly stacks up in his favour that again the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. In its finest moments, the series is reminiscent of the TV version some years back of the author’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the competing allures and fears offered by rational thought and religion. At its worst, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it does seem to provide the response to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”

• To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ now.